“It was a great demonstration of democracy, whether you agree or disagree with the outcome,” Huffington Post’s political reporter Howard Fineman told Ed Schultz on MSNBC late tonight, while discussing the results of the historic Wisconsin recall elections.
Fineman’s comment is either accurate or it is not. Just as the results reported by the computers across the Badger State are either accurate or not. Who knows? Nobody in WI does, and that’s exactly the problem.
The early Exit Poll results had reportedly predicted the race between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett a virtual tie, leading media to plan for a long night tonight. A second round of Exit Polls results, however, was said to have given Walker a broader lead over Barrett. Even so, we were told, the race based on the Exit Poll data alone was still “too close to call.” Those data were either accurate or they were not.
Of course, the raw, unadjusted Exit Polling data are no longer entrusted to us mere mortals. They can be seen only by members of the mainstream media, and we are simply left to trust them to report it all accurately to us or not. And when, after all, have we not been able to rely on the mainstream media to report everything accurately to us?
But never mind the Exit Polls. We’ve got real polls, real votes, actual ballots now to tell us who won or lost. If only we’d bother to actually count them…
Instead, those ballots — Wisconsin votes on mostly paper ballots — are tabulated by computer optical-scan systems like the ones in Palm Beach County, FL, which, in March of this year, had named several losing candidates to be the “winners.” And like the ones in New York City which, in 2010, managed to toss out thousands of valid votes, including as many as 70% in one South Bronx precinct. And like the ones in Oakland County, Michigan, where officials found the same machines failed to count the same ballots the same way twice in 2008. And like the ones in Leon County, FL, which, in 2005, were hacked to entirely flip the results of a mock election.
In Palm Beach County, FL, the failure was discovered during a state-mandated, post-election spot check of 2% of the paper ballots. In New York City, it took nearly two years before the failures were discovered after the New York Daily News was able to examine the paper ballots via a public records request. In Oakland County, MI, election officials were lucky enough to discover the failure during pre-election testing. And in Leon County, FL, the hacker — a computer security expert — revealed the op-scan system flaw he exploited to flip the results of the election in an Emmy-nominated HBO documentary.
In all cases, it was only a hand examination of the paper ballots that revealed the mistabulations by the op-scanners.
In Wisconsin, no such hand-examination is done — not without both a recount request and an order from a judge. They simply do not do manual, post-election spot checks of ballots in WI, other than for Presidential elections, and even then it is only done months after the election has concluded. So there is no way to know if the results reported by the computers reflect what the actual ballots say in Wisconsin.
The numbers used to certify their elections are based entirely on whatever the computers report the results to be. Those results, therefore, are either accurate or they are not.
So, the Exit Polls, the mainstream media’s account of them, and the results themselves in Wisconsin are either accurate or not. The results tonight, according to the Associated Press with 99%of precincts reporting, show Walker winning his recall election by a full 7 points over Barrett.
Similarly, Walker’s Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch is said to have won her recall challenge by 6 points, and three of the four Republican state Senators up for recall reportedly won by either similar or greater margins.
The other state Senate race, between Republican Sen. Van Wanggaard and his Democratic challenger John Lehman, is still being reported as “too close to call” with just 75% of precincts in and an almost 3,000 vote margin reported at this hour (approximately 11:06pm PT).
If Lehman wins, the Democrats will take majority control of the state Senate from the Republicans. It would be the fifth time in history that a flip of a state legislative body has occuured via a recall election*. As is, it’s the first time in history that a Governor has survived a recall election.
[Update 6/6/12, 11:43am pt: The Democratic challenger Lehman has now declared victory over the Republican incumbent Wanggaard with just 800 votes reportedly between them. All of the votes in that race, however, as in the Walker race, remain 100% unverified by human beings. More details on that race now here…]County-by-county results, at least for the gubernatorial race, can be perused very generally here at Huffington Post. Unfortunately, the state of Wisconsin does not report results for the entire state at any central location, so tracking results and watching for anomalies in each of its 72 counties and thousands of municipalities is exceptionally difficult for both Election Integrity folks and even regular old citizen voters simply trying to oversee their own elections.
The networks, including both MSNBC and Fox, called the Governor’s race for Walker within an hour after most of the polls had closed, with just 21% of the 100% unverified computer-reported results in, and even as voters in three counties were still said to be voting, thanks to long lines all day and night, as well as ballots and registration forms running out at a number of locations across the state.
In 2000, when the broadcast news networks initially called the Presidential race for Al Gore in Florida while many in the western part of the state were still voting, Republicans were outraged. Tonight, they seemed to have no problem at all with the surprisingly early calls, with voters still voting, as the GOP celebrated Walker’s reported victory.
The day was highlighted with reportedly very high turnout; students being turned away due to residency issues (see our earlier report on early Election Day concerns for background on that and more); legal voters being turned away, illegally, for lack of Photo ID; ballots and same-day registration forms running out and other problems and concerns about computer tally systems.
The 866-OUR-VOTE Election Protection Coalition’s database received calls on some 1,500 problems as of poll closing at 8pm local time. Many of the problems mentioned above can be seen in the records of those calls, and it’s likely we’ll have more on some of the issues that sent some voters away without being able to cast their votes at a later date.
Moreover, as we always hasten to note, problems with electronic voting systems and tabulators often do not come to light until days, weeks, and sometimes even years (see the problem noted in NYC above) later. Data need to be released and analyzed, and problem reports investigated. That can take some time.
We’ve received a number of, so far, anecdotal reports about op-scan problems, such as one from a journalist who was at the Rufus King International High School in north Milwaukee where, he tells The BRAD BLOG via email late tonight, he saw a number of paper ballots being rejected by the Sequoia Optech Eagle optical-scanners.
“We saw a batch get kicked back in a relatively short amount of time,” he told us, requesting we not use his name or news organization’s, which frowns on sharing reportage with other news outlets.
He says he was there for roughly an hour between 6:30 and 7:30pm local time. “Toward the end of our time,” he writes, “my reporting partner was over by the scanner and told me she saw four or five [ballots] in a row fail to go through the machine, and the voter had to re-fill out the ballot.”
“The old ballot was torn in half and put in a bag by the chief inspector,” he continued. “Then I started watching, and I saw the same thing happen with two or three ballots out of the next five voters. We were told that they had either drawn the line too thick, or circled the names instead of connecting the lines, but who knows?”
Who knows, indeed. Whether it was a machine failure, due to malfeasance or malfunction, or an unlikely rash of voter errors in a row, or even whether the machine ultimately recorded the votes accurately we are likely to never know.
There are a number of reasons why the results, though they showed Walker winning surprisingly early, may have been perfectly accurate. Pundits will spend the next several days justifying the results, simply presuming that they are accurate, and likely never once bothering to examine whether they are or not.
Focus will turn to the unprecedented amount of dark money raised and spent in the election, with Walker’s campaign raising at least $30.5 million (a majority of it coming from out of state) to Barrett’s $3.9 million. That, of course, is just the money raised by the two campaigns themselves. It doesn’t take into affect the extraordinary amount of money spent by outside groups on behalf of the candidates, largely in support of Walker by a reportedly outsized ratio of 25 to 1.
Walker also enjoyed a major advantage over the public airwaves in Wisconsin, with free radio time that may, as we first reported here last week, and as Talkers Magazine confirmed this week, constitute an FCC “equal time” violation.
John Washburn of Fair Elections Wisconsin is both a Republican supporter of Walker’s in Wisconsin and a Election Integrity colleague. We spoke to him tonight and he too questions the accuracy of the results, though he averred the possibility that Walker’s reported victory could be due to a number of tax levies that were removed over the past year, resulting in a smaller tax bill for many Badger State voters in April, just before they then went to the polls in June.
He asks, however, when looking at the much closer Exit Poll results versus the computer-reported tally of ballots: “Why is it that the media simply presume the election results are correct, but that the Exit Polls are not? Why is one set of unverified data more trusted than the other, especially when neither are made publicly verifiable?”
Politico’s Dave Catanase suggests there’s nothing surprising about the election results at all. He observes via Twitter tonight that it “Looks like Walker will win by 7. You know who told us that a week ago? Marquette,” whose University Law School poll predicted a 7 point win for Walker late last week in their final pre-election survey of likely voters. Later pre-election polls indicated a tighter race.
But, of course, elections should not be about justifying results which may or may not be accurate. They should be about democratic self-governance, in which both participants and observers know the results are accurate.
Too many similarly questionable elections led us last year to call for hand-count paper ballot pilot projects to, once and for all, begin moving the life-blood of our system of self-governance — the vote itself — to a system in which all stakeholders can know for certain that the tally is accurate and that we truly have the self-governance we pretend to have.
That starts with the vote, and it should end with “Democracy’s Gold Standard”: hand-marked paper ballots, publicly hand-counted at the precincts (or wards, as they call them in Wisconsin), with all citizens, parties, and video cameras observing and with results posted right then and there before any ballots are moved anywhere. It’s quick, accurate and a very difficult system to game, at least without a good chance of detection, and it would help put an end to all the questions in election after election, as to whether those announced as the “winners” have actually won.
Given the extraordinary amount of dark money and problems at the polls and questions about the results, it is very difficult to agree with Fineman’s statement that today was “a great demonstration of democracy.” But it certainly should have been.
We need to do better. But it seems our system of self governance via elections just keeps getting worse and worse. Or maybe it doesn’t. Who knows? And that’s exactly the problem.
* CORRECTION: We originally misreported that a certified win by Democratic challenger John Lehman against the incumbent state Senator Van Wanggaard in the District 21 state Senate recall would be the first time in history that a recall election has succeeded in flipping majority control of a state legislative body. In fact, blogger Joshua Spivak, who the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel describes as a “national expert on recalls” reports that it would be the fifth time in U.S. history that such a flip has occurred. We regret the error, have corrected it in the story above, and thank Rick H. in comments below for tipping us off to it.
Brad, there’s something SERIOUSLY WRONG with the Wisconsin vote!
It was called WAY TOO FAST!
There were late voters. They ran out of new voter registration forms and ballots. It couldn’t have ended so quickly.
Someone knew how to do this.
And by the way, the Waukesha County Clerk was there, too …… again.
Yes, Walker survived by a landslide, but he also galvanized the democrats. He even put a dent in the Tea Party.
The net effect of this on the national level is more significant than the politics of Wisconsin.
I think BOTH exit polls were accurate. My impression was that there were big lines of very motivated people who got to the polls and waited in line for them to open. I think that number of very motivated people were probably skewed against Walker.
However, when I went to the polls in mid-afternoon, though there were people going in and out, there was no line at all, and I live in Madison.
Had the initial volume held up, we would have been looking at record-breaking turnout volume, which boded for a near tie or a Barrett win. Instead, it seems like that turnout volume tailed off significantly, and we wound up with turnout above last election, but below the numbers needed to close the gap from rural areas. And well below presidential turnout numbers from 2004 and 2008.
This election was about money drowning out the truth, plain and simple. At least the Senate flipped due to good turnout in Racine county.
There was an election, and the Dems lost. There was a vote, so they left the State. There was a recall, and they lost again. I suppose it is easier to pretend you just somehow magically got screwed, but there really is an alternative. At some point you could put on your big boy pants, man up, and say “We lost.” Hey, it happens. They called the Republicans the “Party of No” only to become the party of no show. Learn your lesson, lefties. People want their politicians to act like adults.
I can only hope that Walker completely destroys Wisconsin, destroys all unions in Wis, Unemployment up to 11+%, close schools, you name it. Total destruction.
Because there are only 2 possibilities here.
Either this election was out right STOLEN through election fraud by totally unverifiable voting machines, (most likely IMO) OR the majority of people in Wisconsin are stupid beyond belief and deserve what they just did to themselves.
Personally I do not believe that 36% of Union Members and 17% of Obama supporters voted for Walker. They most likely switched votes which we all know is so easily done they could have had someones 8 year old do it on a laptop.
They probably made it a landslide so that Democrats would not want a recount or investigate.
There is no way in hell Walker won by a landslide.
I don’t believe the outcome – we’ll see who reports irregularities next. Walker was not well-liked for obvious reasons.
Hard to see positives in what looks like another stolen election. The only one that I can think of is Occupy Wall Street is gaining momentum out of frustration with our phony election system and phony media.
From the 14 points of fascism.
14. Fraudulent elections
Elections in the form of plebiscites or public opinion polls were usually bogus. When actual elections with candidates were held, they would usually be perverted by the power elite to get the desired result. Common methods included maintaining control of the election machinery, intimidating and disenfranchising opposition voters, destroying or disallowing legal votes, and, as a last resort, turning to a judiciary beholden to the power elite.
NOTE: The above 14 Points was written in 2004 by Dr. Laurence Britt, a political scientist. Dr. Britt studied the fascist regimes of: Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile).
So let me get this straight…
With only the electronic votes in, they (within an hour) show Walker with a “20% lead” that Barret must now spend the rest of the night catching up to, but as the night wains and the PAPER ballots are tabulated, the race narrows as counts show Barret receiving more votes than Walker in most precincts?
Add to that Exit Polling showing the race closer to “50/50”?
If THAT isn’t suspicious enough to attract attention, I don’t know what is.
Hey Steve, your “adult” may be indicted soon.
As far as the election is concerned, it’s true $50 or so million buys a lot of stupid, and many people out there are to lazy to check facts or avoid falling into the divide and conquer trap. But until we start sample checking a random machine in each precinct by hand, there’s no reason to trust the accuracy of any similarly tallied election results.
John Trudell on voting and non-cooperation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-z24wkn4zQ
Just bummed about this whole mess.
I can appreciate the emotion on the losing side of this outcome. Emotions tend to lead to irrational mental processes which I suspect are at the root of the “stolen election” and “may or may not” language.
It appears that Walker was first elected on an agenda he put forward. He was subjected to a recall by sore losers that rejected the democratic process that put him in office. The state government was put on hold by legislators who left the state rather than do the hard work of legislating. I doubt any of this made Wisconsin any better…especially after spending all the money for two recall elections.
I do not understand people like Nunyabiz who wants to see Wisconsin destroyed because his/her side lost. That is just great. Moreover, I read tweets calling for the death of Scott Walker. Simply amazing.
Some are posting that the election was stolen. I suspect not. If Obama thought that Barrett had a chance of winning, he would have gotten behind him in a serious way rather than the tepid tweet he offered. Obama most likely has internal polling numbers and new that Walker would win, so he ducked this one to save his own upcoming election. All but two polls had Walker trouncing Barrett. The results fell in line with the average of these polls.
Regarding out of state influences…it happens all the time on both sides. Is it a good thing? Probably not, but there is no sense in whirrrring about it.
The Democrats will get another chance at the next election, but for now, move on and put this one behind you. The sun will rise tomorrow.
The let me enlighten you on how I see it.
I want Wisconsin destroyed because if this election was not stolen and the money is what “won” this, and that many people are THAT stupid then I wan them to suffer and suffer badly so they can think about how stupid they are for voting wildly against their own best interest like a bunch of idiots.
That way next time they might pay attention when something as blatantly obvious as how crooked and vile Walker and the Tpublicans are slap them in the face.
They might just take the 5 minutes it would have taken to get informed instead of sitting back like some fat happy pig in slop waddling on up the slaughter house with a big red neon sign on the front that reads:
“Stop! you dumb fat pig this a slaughter house, one more step and you will die”
That is literally how blatant the Tpublicans were in their agenda to destroy the state, the unions etc.
So I hope they either get exactly what they voted for OR if it was stolen they wake up and get informed and the only way that will happen is a wake up call of pain and suffering that is self inflicted.
Davey Crockett–
What part of error-prone easy to hack electronic voting machines which make it impossible to know with any certainty if election results are accurate/valid or not, do you not understand?
Or are you just gonna come right out and say that you know all that but you prefer faith-based elections?
I agree with David Lasagna. There’s something very fishy about John Lehman winning that senate seat which (all night long) seemed to be in the bag for the Republican. I’m quite sure the squeaky wheel is looking into that and I expect a hard hitting piece asking the tough questions at any moment.
I received the following email message from WI State Sen. Mark Miller (D):
But what the national media is not telling you is: I am the new Democratic Senate Majority Leader after winning an important Senate recall election by just hundreds of votes.
Starting today, Senate Democrats will be a strong check on Scott Walker’s power. If Walker tries to pass extreme policies that bust unions, hurt women, or attack middle-class families, we will have one word for him: No. We will demand laws that benefit the middle class and start repairing our state.
Nunyabiz @13
Thank you, I feel enlightened.
David @14
Your question was imbedded with a premise that I do not accept, so it is impossible to answer your question.
If the election can be shown to be stolen, then I would support having the true winner take office.
There are plenty of interests that would like to prove that the election was stolen (including your BFF Brad), so let those do their diligence to find out for sure. Until then, I am going to believe that it was a fair election. That is not an unreasonable position to take–pretty rational.
Practice makes perfect.
The picture at the to of this post looks rather curious to me. The African-American youths are unsmiling and look like props. I would love to know the story behind it and how that picture got taken and by whom. Can you say anything about that, Brad?
The people of Wisconsin may not realize it yet, but they may have just elected Rebecca Kleefisch (R) to serve the balance of Scott Walker’s term.
There is a growing body of evidence that Walker’s former Deputy Chief of Staff Tim Russell will tell all about Walker’s criminal complicity in the John Doe investigation to avoid a lengthy stay in prison — just as I originally predicted when I first covered the investigation.
You are right, Ernest, and you are pointing out a HUGE failure of our media. Walker IS JOHN DOE.
His closest aide, tied to every other charged crime, is now squealing.
The media has protected walker, catapulted his lies uncritically, and used the content from his bogus ads to frame the news.
Now they desperately want us to forget all this “John Doe” stuff so when Walker gets arrested, they can say, “GEEE, WHO WOULD HAVE KNOWN!”
More than anything else, this is a MEDIA failure and no positive change is possible until we take back the media.
“If Lehman wins, it will be the first time in history that a recall flips the majority party in a state legislature.â€
JSOnline:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/walker-to-meet-with-cabinet-on-jobs-8i5mapa-157488605.html
http://recallelections.blogspot.com/2012/06/lehman-declares-victory-democrats-take.html
note to Ernie–
You posted a comment on the previous thread in response to wingnut and davey that you meant to post on this thread.
Davey Crocket @ 17
Your response and non-answer to my question–
–makes no sense.
The whole point of this post, a gazillion other pieces by Brad, and my question to you is that there is no way to know who won or lost when we use unaudited machines.
So, how the hell would anyone “prove” that an election was stolen or not when currently there is no way to do that?
You aren’t making sense. So I disagree–you’re not being reasonable or rational.
I think it’s more likely a comment on the state of politics in general. The working class in Wisconsin is, by and large, attracted to the right-wing “populism” offered up by these so-called “tea party” candidates. Let’s face facts.
Why, you might ask? Why do they vote against their own self interests? I think it’s because they hate “liberals” (meaning the snooty elites in power who are always mocking them, calling them stupid and who, come on, abandoned the working classes long ago). Also it’s because they hate unions (who, let’s face it, also largely abandoned the working classes in pursuit of power and money long ago).
So, yes, it’s a bummer. But the sooner we disassociate our left-leaning movements from the democratic party and their union backers, the better. Our prosperity will not be brought by them. I’m sick of the “lesser of two evils” argument. Obama has given us just about the worst possible outcome. At least with Mitt Romney maybe people will stand up and fight against the growing fascism in this country rather than wring their hands as apologists in denial for the total betrayal they’ve been subject to over recent years. Every day it seems brings a new outrage, from kill lists and random drone killings, to indefinite detention. From “free speech zones” to the TSA to the medical MJ raids.
I consider myself to be pretty far left on the political spectrum (live and let live and all), but I feel a deep futility in voting these days (though I still do vote for what it’s worth). Both parties are essentially carrying out the same agenda. How does that quote go? “If voting actually changed anything they’d make it illegal.”
It would be far better to understand and show some respect for these people outside of Madison who voted for Walker so we can build a movement for us all than to try to tear them down. The Koch brothers only have such great opportunity to enrich themselves further because we as a people are so deeply divided.
I voted for Obama 2008 and I realize my error now. Was McCain better? Heck no. But at least I can admit I was duped and say I won’t be making the same mistake twice. Will I vote for Romney? No thanks. Neither of the dominant parties represent the interests of me or my family.
Could this election have been outright stolen? I suppose so, but the way our elections are currently run prevents us from ever really knowing.
Davey Crocket @17-
What’s the premise in my question that you do not accept? Do you not accept that our voting machines are error-prone and easy to hack?
I wouldn’t hold my breath for Walker’s indictment. As much as I hope he would be held accountable for any crimes he’s committed, the US justice system works differently for those of us with access to large sums of money. I suspect the wheels of justice in this case will continue to move along as slow as ever.
Last night felt a lot like November 2, 2004 to me. Not because the results seem wrong this time (they may or they may not be, as Brad points out) but because once again we were treated to the horrid spectacle of the media calling an election while long lines of people were still waiting to vote.
As one of the nine Regional Coordinators for the 2004 Ohio Recount, I spent December of that year on the ground in the Buckeye State. There I had the sad privilege of meeting many of the Ohio voters who went through this same disgrace in the huge 2004 Presidential election. I left Ohio with a renewed commitment to doing everything I can to see that every vote is counted, every time, in EVERY election.
Each vote is precious. Regardless of whether or not somebody thinks it will change the results of an election or not, each vote represents some citizen’s voice. Each vote is some person’s one opportunity to participate and be heard. If we do not respect each vote, by at the very least waiting until it is cast before we count it in or out, how can we as a society ever claim to respect the citizen behind it?
Regardless of all the problems with counting our votes, and regardless of all the problems with our elections in general, there can be no reason — ever — to call an election before each and every vote is cast.
David Lasagna @ 23 wrote:
You are correct David. Mea culpa!
Here’s the relevant post:
Both have been around The BRAD BLOG long enough to realize that they are publishing comments that are blatantly false — that Brad has consistently advocated electoral transparency irrespective of whether the winner was from the Left or the Right.
See, e.g., NY-23 E-Vote Failures Merit Full Hand Count in Response where Brad questioned the op scan results when Bill Owens (D) was declared the winner of an NY-23 special election over Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, and ‘Election Integrity is Vital’: Joe Miller Makes a Federal Case out of It in AK’s U.S. Senate Contest in which Brad presented the same issues of election integrity when the ‘Tea Party’ candidate had been on the wrong end of numbers spewed out by an e-voting system.
Of course, Brad then went on to write the relevant post re Lehman’s “premature†victory claim, which WingnutSteve then seamlessly applauded without so much as a reference to his earlier sarcasm.
I share your concerns, Katie, and have more on that here:
Scott Walker & Cronies: Too Big To Jail? Can Our System of Justice Hold Powerful GOPers Accountable?
But 15 felonies so far, 13 people with immunity, walker and his media cronies spinning furiously, and timmy russell (tied to EACH AND EVERY indictment so far – 15 felonies and 3 misdemeanors that should have been felonies) does mean someone is going down eventually.
Timmy is reportedly squealin’ like a pig. Walker threw him under the bus and now this thievin’ pig’s back is to the wall.
I understand and accept your skeptism, but please don’t let the media snooker you – there is some serious criminality here and WALKER IS JOHN DOE!
David #26
1) Error-prone: you are saying that the electronic voting machines are more likely to make an error than not.
2) Easy to hack: if I understand “easy” then anybody can do it.
On (1) I believe that electronic voting machines can make errors. I do not believe that they are more likely to make errors than not.
On (2) I believe that all stored program computers from micros to mainframes can be hacked. There are various levels of difficulty to hacking a computer. Moreover, I believe they have been hacked in the past. Don’t know about this election.
I am not against hand counting. But, elections were stolen when hand-counting was the norm.
Will all of the emotion surrounding this election, I suspect that in November we will see a run on xanax.
Davey Crocket @ 31–
I am not saying, as you say I am, that “electronic voting machines are more likely to make an error than not.” I am saying what I’m saying which is that electronic voting machines are error-prone. Prone means–having a tendency or inclination.
If you agree that electronic voting machines make errors, that’s close enough for me in the context of this discussion. And if you agree that machines can be hacked, that’s close enough, too.
Both of those opinions were ones that I thought you already held which is why I didn’t understand your comment @12 which from the get-go seemed to ignore these facts and go off on secondary(to the initial post’s) points. That’s what my initial comment objected to–you were talking like the main point Brad was making was nowhere to be seen and that he was saying something entirely different than what he was saying.
A lot of that going around these days.
The issue, Davey Crocket @31, is transparency.
If you’d bothered to follow Brad’s link to Democracy’s Gold Standard, you would learn why the German high court ruled that e-voting (either 100% unverifiable DRE touch screens or optical scan systems), are unacceptable under that nation’s constitution:
That court’s landmark findings were:
• “No ‘specialized technical knowledge’ can be required of citizens to vote or to monitor vote counts.”
• There is a “constitutional requirement of a publicly observed count.”
• “[T]he government substitution of its own check or what we’d probably call an ‘audit’ is no substitute at all for public observation.”
• “A paper trail simply does not suffice to meet the above standards.
• “As a result of these principles,…’all independent observers’ conclude that ‘electronic voting machines are totally banned in Germany’ because no conceivable computerized voting system can cast and count votes that meet the twin requirements of…being both ‘observable’ and also not requiring specialized technical knowledge.”
Contrary to your suggestion, election integrity has absolutely nothing to do with “the emotion surrounding this election.”
It has to do with the fundamental prerequisite that democracy requires that citizens know in every election that the individual who is declared the winner actually received the most votes. Nothing more; nothing less!
EC@31,
I am perfectly content with transparency. Did I say otherwise?
The “emotions” comment was essentially a postscript about the election. Had nothing to do with hand count, machine count, or any of the mechanics of the vote. Sorry I introduced some confusion on that point.
David @32
We probably reached harmonic convergence.
DaveyCrockett said @ 12:
Really? Where has anything like this ever happened on “both sides”?
I’d love to know. I suspect you’ll be no help, however.
Ewastud @ 19:
Not much. But I do love it. It was tweeted some days ago w/o attribution. Here is the full size pic. (I cropped it a bit for use in the story above.)
Davey Crockett @ 31 said:
When has fully public, precinct based hand-counting ever been “the norm”? Or are you simply making things up again? Like your unsubstantiated “both sides do it” argument above?
Brad@35
Yup, $100 came from me…from Texas.
Was there a law broken?
Brad @37
OK, “fully public, precinct based hand-counting” was never the norm. YOU WIN!
“Like your unsubstantiated “both sides do it” argument above? ”
“That starts with the vote, and it should end with “Democracy’s Gold Standard”: hand-marked paper ballots, publicly hand-counted at the precincts (or wards, as they call them in Wisconsin), with all citizens, parties, and video cameras observing and with results posted right then and there before any ballots are moved anywhere. It’s quick, accurate and a very difficult system to game, at least without a good chance of detection, and it would help put an end to all the questions in election after election, as to whether those announced as the “winners” have actually won.”
So glad to see I’m not alone in this idea! What do we have to do to make it happen in time for NOVEMBER????
Rick H. @ 22:
Thanks for catching that error! Have corrected it in the story above, along with a CORRECTION note at the bottom of the story. Much appreciated!
Not only were there people standing in line, but the media approached those people, asking why they were still standing in line when Walker already “won”.
Also, I observed poll closing in southwest Madison. There, the first memory card for the machine “broke” and had to be replaced after ballot #894. Ballots had to be run through the machine at the end of the night that hadn’t been counted yet.
Additionally, I wrote in my votes on an absentee ballot. Although my absentee ballot did make it to my polling location (I saw it), my vote was not counted. They simply made tallies on a sheet for all the people who wrote-in Tom Barrett and Mahlon Mitchell (and any other write-ins). The Chief Inspector did not know if or how those votes would be added into the final total. There are many other wards where people wrote-in their votes to ensure they would be counted by hand…
Davey Crockett–
I’m glad you think we reached harmonic convergence at #34, but then at #38 you post another response/argument that doesn’t make sense and again ignores the meaning of what Brad is saying.
In this case the topic under discussion is out of state influence. Brad challenges your claim that it “happens all the time on both sides” by asking you to name other instances where there’s been a $26 million dollar disparity between sides in campaign funding.
You respond that you threw a $100 into the pot from Texas.
What does that have to do with anything?
Nobody’s saying that money doesn’t come in from different places. The point being made is that this kind of election affecting disparity resulting largely from donations from a few anonymous and out of state rich people IS new.
“It appears that Walker was first elected on an agenda he put forward.”
Really? Please point to a platform or speech, etc. from 2010 in which Walker said he was going to make taking on unions an issue in his administration.
So it seems to me that if the MSM is correct (I believe Brad is correct that we should look at the ballots first) that it was the 8 to 1 ratio of money spent that caused Walker to win, then we should impose a poltiical tax. A 30% tax on all political contributions. Why should the media companies get all the profits from Citizens United. Wisconsin would have made a decent dent in the state’s budget problems.
re#44–
This is one of the many(and it really becomes a snowballing nightmare into Alice in Kafkaland) fuckers about not knowing with any certainty what the actual results of the fucking election are.
If the posted results are accurate, then I think it’s safe to assume that money swung the deal, along with whatever influence the ongoing parade of dirty tricks might have had.
If the posted results are NOT accurate and say, for instance, that Barrett actually won, then how thrilling would that be for progressives to know that if we stick together and work hard we can overcome the effect of enormous disparities in campaign funding? Basically, fuck you, Citizens United.
But when you don’t/can’t really know what the actual vote is, how the hell do you work for change? What do you aim at? Except to continue to work to change the whole fucking dysfunctional mess.
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